Ampallang
male genital piercing
The palang (Iban: crossbar) or ampallang is a male genital piercing that penetrates horizontally through the entire glans of the penis.
History
Penis piercings of proto-Malay origin predated European contact with the peoples of Maritime Southeast Asia, including tribes in the Philippines, and in Borneo's Dayak people, among others. Thomas Cavendish claimed in a 16th century work that use in the Philippines was invented by the women to prevent sodomy (where that variant included a spur).
Types
The titular piercing may be transurethral (passing through the urethra), which is termed the European ampallang; the American ampallang is placed horizontally above the urethra, generally back toward the corona. A variant on this piercing is the deep shaft piercing, or "shaft ampallang", which penetrates the shaft of the penis horizontally at any point along its length. The counterpart to this piercing is the apadravya, which penetrates the glans vertically. The combination of an ampallang and an apadravya is sometimes referred to as the magic cross.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q474387. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ampallang” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.